Book Discussions

The Manchester City Library is pleased to offer to our patrons two book discussion groups. Each group meets once per month at the Main Branch of the library on Pine Street. If you would like to participate, please pick up your copy of the assigned reading at the Circulation Desk.

Thursday Evening Book Discussion: Thursdays @ 7PM in the Hunt Room

September 13, 2018

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Manchester’s One Book, One City selection follows a young couple who use magic doors to escape an unnamed city beset by bombings and militants and get caught up in the modern day refugee crisis.

October 11, 2018

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBIby David Grann

Presents a true account of the early 20th century murders of members of the wealthy Osage tribe and law enforcement officials and highlights a chilling conspiracy uncovered by the fledgling FBI.

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November 8, 2018

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

In this novel Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced by the Bolsheviks to house arrest in a grand hotel in early 20th century Moscow.

December 13, 2018

A Piece of the World by Christine Baker Kline

Interweaves fact and fiction in a novel about the woman who inspired Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting Christina’s World.

January 10, 2019

Dead Presidents: An American Adventure into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of our Nation’s Leadersby Brady Carlson

The author takes readers on a funny and entertaining trip to gravesites, monuments and memorials and explores the death stories of our greatest leaders.

February 14, 2019

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by EJeannette Walls

Walls, author of The Glass Castle, based this novel on the life of her grandmother, who grew up on the ranges of the Southwest in the early 1900s.

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March 14, 2019

1984 by George orwell

Imagines life in a totalitarian regime where Big Brother is listening. The New York Times calls this classic a must read for modern day America.

April 11, 2019

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

During World War I women working in military factories fell mysteriously and often fatally ill from the effects of a new substance called radium. Highlights one of America’s biggest scandals and a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights

May 9, 2019

American Marriage by Tayari Jones

How the marriage of Celestial and Roy is affected when Roy is sent to prisoon for a crime that they both know he didn't commit.

Brown Bag Book Club: Last Tuesday of the month @12:15-1:30PM in the Hunt Room

​September 25, 2018

The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen By Hendrik Groen

Groen’s novel shares a year of an octogenarian’s journal entries. Engaging and hilarious, Hendrick’s diary gives dignity and respect to the elderly, and provides readers with a look into the importance of friendship and the realities of modern senior care.

October 30, 2018

I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

This autobiography of poet Maya Angelou published shortly after she turned 40 is the story of her horrific childhood and how she managed to emerge from it as an adult capable of coping in the world. Angelou writes beautiful prose and is very in touch with both emotional stunting and growth.

November 27, 2018

Snow in August By Pete Hamill

Set in a working class Brooklyn neighborhood in 1947, this poignant tale revolves around two endearing characters—an eleven year old Irish Catholic boy and Rabbi Judah Hirsch, a refugee from Prague.

December 18, 2018

Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel… published in 1953. The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and ‘firemen’ burn any that are found… The lead character is a fireman named Montag who becomes disillusioned with the role of censoring works and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and joining a resistance group who memorize and share the world’s greatest literary cultural works.” Wikipedia.

January 29, 2019

Far From the Madding Crowd By Thomas Hardy

The story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdeen, a fiercely independent woman, who inherits a farm and decides to run it. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy, and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life.

February 26, 2019

Educated: A Memoir By Tara Westover

Tara Westover was seventeen when she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, a family so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education. Her longing for a way out caused her to begin educating herself. Her persistence was rewarded with admission to Brigham Young University and later to Cambridge University in England where she earned a Ph.D.

March 26, 2019

The Life We Bury By Allen Eskens

Joe Talbert is a college student with an addicted mother, an autistic brother he loves, and a desire to get a college degree. His assignment for English class is to write about someone he doesn’t know. Simple, he thinks, until he meets a Vietnam veteran in a nursing home who is dying. His writing and life problems pile up as this story unravels.

April 30, 2019

Lilac Girls By Martha Hall Kelly

Based on the life of Caroline Farriday, a New York socialite who championed a group of WWII concentration camp survivors. The three women in the novel represent part of a group of Polish women brought by Farriday for treatment of the painful, debilitating experiments conducted at Ravensbruk concentration camp. Through this novel an injustice that might have been overlooked or forgotten is brought to light. Cosmopolitan

May 28, 2019

House of Mirth By Edith Wharton

A complex story involving the quest to marry well, an abundance of suitors, the embarrassment of diminished circumstances, and a beautiful woman named Lily Bart. The restraints placed upon Lily by the society she hopes to embrace collide with her own integrity in her pursuit of a “suitable match.” Good Reads

June 25, 2019

What She Left Behind By Ellen Marie Wiseman

A book composed of two interwoven stories. Clara, a woman who lived in the 1930’s, was committed to a mental institution by her wealthy father who opposed her relationship with her immigrant boyfriend. Izzy is a contemporary teenager who lived with numerous fosterparents before moving in with a couple who is researching the records of Clara’s mental institution. Here is where the stories come together.